Military pension cuts turn down a rough road

The pension cuts are set to take effect on Dec. 1, 2015, with a few important changes. | AP Photo

“It was a bipartisan agreement, a very tough agreement. There was a lot of discussion about a lot of the issues,” she told POLITICO. “Obviously, we were trying really hard to prevent $20 billion in cuts to defense.”

After the hearing, Levin also said he had not been consulted about the cuts. “That’s the way some of these conferences go,” he said. “Some of these things just come together at the end, and they just lay it down in their best judgment and then take responsibility for it.”

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Levin said he would prefer to have a proposal come to the floor to repeal the cuts and debate ways to pay for them there. “It’s going to be a lot harder to get a bill to the floor which has broad, bipartisan coalition if you try to identify the pay-for in advance,” he told reporters.

By including the pension cuts in the budget agreement, lawmakers made an end run around the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, a nine-member group set to report to Congress in February 2015.

“Changes to our retirement plan, if appropriate, should only be made after the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission takes a holistic look at the many variables involved in such a plan,” Winnefeld said. “Accounting for changes in the cost of living is only one of those variables, and it’s too soon to reach a conclusion on whether it should be part of a grandfathered plan.”

David Chu, who was the Pentagon’s top personnel officer, said in his prepared testimony that taming personnel costs should come “in the appropriate holistic manner, with the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission.”

But Wicker said waiting 13 months for the committee to deliver a report was too long.

“It doesn’t make any sense if we’re all in agreement on this to wait unless you want to hold out the possibility that we’ll stick with it,” Wicker said, challenging the Pentagon’s hope that change would come after the commission’s February 2015 report at earliest.

“We have told military members, ‘You do your side of the bargain. … we’re gonna keep our promise to you,’ and last month, we broke that promise. And now we’re being told, ‘Well, let’s just wait 13 months before we fix that,’” Wicker added. “I can’t go along with that. This is about a promise that everybody says we need to keep.”

Under the current military retirement system, service members may retire after 20 years in the military and receive pensions worth half their pay, even if they leave at age 38. Those retirees are also eligible for lifetime health insurance through TRICARE at a fraction of the costs paid by civilians.

Veterans’ advocates have been outraged about the retirement cuts, arguing that budget negotiators singled out military retirees and that it breaks a promise made to service members when they enlisted.

Retired Master Sgt. Richard Delaney, the national president of the Retired Enlisted Association, said he worried the military has become an “easy target,” despite the fact that one of the biggest reasons service members choose to pursue a military career is its benefits and pensions.

“A lot of people view the military as an easy target. We’re a small group, and they say, ‘OK, we’ll take some money from them,” Delaney said. “That’s what really bothers me.”

“This blow to an earned deferred compensation benefit will be an enormous disincentive for qualified, battle-tested military personnel to remain on active duty. Recruitment will also suffer because any decision to serve could be influenced by how the current force is treated,” Retired Gen. Gordon Sullivan, president and CEO of the Association of the United States Army, said in a statement. “Today’s soldiers are tomorrow’s retirees, and they are watching.”